This week on the Truth Perspective, talked about aims. What does it mean to have an aim? Do you have one? What goes into the task of formulating an aim? Sometimes we think we have an aim, but we don't. Sometimes our aims are vague or simply the product of everyday habits and social norms. But a clear, overarching aim in life can be something different.
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Running Time: 01:47:00
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Here's the transcript of the show:
Harrison: Hello everyone, welcome back to the Truth Perspective, It's February 20th and in the studio today we have Elan Martin, Shane LaChance. I'm your host for today, Harrison Koehli. Today we're going to be talking about aims. I guess we'll find out what exactly is an aim, basically I think people go through life - at some level people think in terms of the goals they want to achieve in life. The aims that they may have, but we're going to get into the details of that and I think we have joining with us; do we have anyone joining us today in the virtual studio?
Caller 1: Hi! Just listening, thank you!
Harrison: Well we're expecting some calls.
Elan: Some special guest stars.
Harrison: If you have any thoughts on the subject, if you want to ask us questions or if you disagree with us vehemently feel free to call in. Guest caller is 718 508 9499 or you can call in on Skype on the blog talk website.
Shane: Even if you don't disagree vehemently, you can still call us.
Harrison: That's what I was going to say, we only want vehemently disagree. That's my aim for this show, to get some vehement disagreement going on today.
Shane: I disagree with Harrison.
Harrison: Ok... vehemently?
Elan: Let's get onto the aim of this show, another aim anyway. Just on a very basic level, Harrison you started out by mentioning when we generally think about aims for our life we think about it in a more or less conventional sense.
Harrison: Short term goals, long term goals, life goals...
Elan: Yeaahhh. Get that promotion by the end of the year; buy a house in 5 years.
Harrison: Get that position at the cooperation that you really want to work at.
Elan: Yeah and it may even be more complicated or involved
Harrison: I think we've just been hacked, some interlopers on the show today. Who's there? Is that Joe and Niall? Are you guys there?
Caller 1: Just listening!!
Harrison: Oh well I think we have a mis-label here, let's see.
Joe: Can you guys hear us?
Shane: We can hear you now
Harrison: There was a mis-labelling of a caller in the studio, but here you are we can hear you.
Joe: Ah, Ok sorry that might have been me. Oops, I mis-labelled myself.
Elan: You should never mis-label yourself.
Joe: I know it's very bad, you've been hacked. Ok so carry on, what were you guys talking about here? We were having some trouble getting us in because we're all up in the air with our upcoming changes and stuff. We were actually logged into the other one, so we had to log out. There are changes.
Harrison: Yes and we're looking forward to them. To the listeners who haven't tuned in for the past few weeks we are moving to our own radio network. It'll be exclusively SOTT; we're ditching the Blog talk. It sounds great, we have done some tests and it's going to be awesome so that's something really to look forward to I think, we're excited about it.
Joe: We won't be on our Behind the headlines show tomorrow, we won't be broadcasting on Blog talk radio.
Niall: We'll announce is on there, we'll direct people to where they can go to listen to it.
Joe: They'll just see a show blurb thing that we're moved and there's a link to go and listen, or they should.
Elan: Onwards and upwards.
Joe: You guys will be following us through in a couple of week's time.
Shane: Yeah we're going to get up to speed and get on there.
Harrison: In case you guys missed it, we're going to be talking about aims. What is means to have an aim or what an aim even is and how to go about doing it. We just brought up the idea that, I think in general most people will have something that they consider short term goals, or long term goals. We gave just a few examples of the kind of job you want to have, the amount of money you want to make, you want to get that house, maybe have to kids or 2 and a half kids if you want to go in that direction. That's pretty much all we had to say so far. Do you have an aim for today?
Joe: We had the aim to join you on your show and put you straight.
Harrison: You've achieved the first part of the aim; you're now on the show after a few minor difficulties. I think that's part of it you know, whenever you have an aim there's something you're looking forward to, something you're aiming at. Maybe the problems come in when formulating what you want your aim to be, and then in implementing it because the world seems to have numerous ways of putting road blocks in front of you. I guess maybe we can start out with formulating an aim and the ways in which we go about that. Maybe what we might mean by it as opposed to someone you might interview on the street, what do you guys think, what comes to mind when formulating an aim?
Joe: I think most people don't have an aim. Or their aims are very unconscious or transient, they just live from moment to moment, they don't really have any long term aims. Most people have needs that they determine and then they try to get those needs fulfilled and once they're fulfilled or even partially, then people are satisfied. Of course society provides many ways to fulfil people's needs, so in that sense people today don't really need to have an aim if they don't want to have an aim, they don't need to have an aim.
Society makes it so that people can get by quite easily without an aim because effectively most people's needs are provided for them by society. Maybe they have to work a little to get them but it's usually fairly accessible for most people to get their needs met, so I guess most people don't have any.
Harrison: I'd say something similar, I might may a differentiation between different kinds of aims, I think there might be something of a conscious aim because you mentioned that people might have trivial or unconscious automatic aims, and that's the way I see it. I think that really aimed, goal-based behaviour is pretty much intrinsic into human nature, if you're hungry and you want something to eat then you've got this unconscious aim that you're going to eat something. So you're thinking; 'Ok, I'm going to have a pork chop', so you might have to buy the pork chop or it's in your fridge and you've got it, so then there' s process in order to fulfil that and it comes and you put it on the pan and you fry it up and you eat it.
That's probably the extent to most people's aims, I think that a lot of people would disagree with that and say, I had the aim to build a successfully company and I did that. What do you think about that? Would you consider that an aim if you have this goal that you want to start a company, you've got an idea, maybe after 5 years you achieve it, is that what we're talking about here?
Joe: Well that's life goals, which people have right. But that could be the same thing; I think the question here is. I would go back to the need thing. It depends, an aim from me would be in a similar context, I think what we're talking about here on the show, an aim is something that is more than just a fulfilment that a basic need, like you mentioned pork chop - that's a need, early primitive biological need. People could do that in their sleep, there's almost like there's very little truly conscious awareness input necessary for a person to walk down to the shop and to take it home, fry and eat it. I'm pretty sure that there are cases in history that people have walked to the shop in their sleep took it back and ate it whilst asleep. Woke up in the morning and said who was eating pork chops last night? Oh, it was me!
There are many things that people aspire to but the motivation behind them is very basic primitive
Harrison: Biological
Joe: That can be spun or transformed with; it can be filled out by certain people or many people into something grander and something more comforting. If you look behind it you can see the motivation really is a fairly biological need, even the person who forms a company and takes 5 years to make a successful company, that person is doing that primarily because they want to have money, have stuff. Fairly basic drives, I don't think gets into the kind of idea of what we're talking about which is an aim, which for me an aim is something that you have in life and it's usually some kind of an abstract goal that you want to achieve. I would think closer to the idea of an aim would be something that is quite common, people who want to change some part of themselves, who want to become better people, or learn new skills, more abstract things instead of the guy who wants to start a company and makes lots of money.
I think maybe the idea of, let's take it down to the simple level, an aim could be, a better way to describe it, learning to play a musical instrument. Some people might have a fairly basic reason for wanting to do that, but I think in a lot of cases, those kind of things, the personal development - learning new skills, a lot of people who choose that as their aim, they're doing it not for any primitive biological reasons but because it's more inspired and creative. Very often the more a person has experienced life and experienced problems in their lives and suffered, the more likely it is that their aim in life will be closer to a true aim, as we're talking about here on the show.
Harrison: Just from the example you gave from being a musician, I think we have identified two levels of aims. I think it comes down to what is your motivation for doing it, I think you can find people who want to learn an instrument or want to become a gourmet chef to cook a better pork chop. They'll learn that skill and the motivation can be, like you said, even for a musician, the motivation to learn a musical instrument can simply be to get a good paid job, which is kind of unlikely but it does happen. To be able to get food and fill those biological drives, I think maybe what we're getting at here not only is there a different motivation but what informs that motivation. What's the nature of that?
I think you got close, you were getting at it when you said that it's something more creative, it's got something more to do with the inner self and the contradiction between the state that we're in now and an abstract state that we can see and vision, we feel this pull towards. Well, as a person I want to be more like this and I don't just want this for the money, that's a totally separate area of my life, there is something more important and I want to work towards. With that kind of aim it might start out at being very vague, so you might have been living your life just trying to win the rat race and to try and be a part of society as it is, basically fulfilling those biological drives and pretty much everything you do is somewhat in service of those. But then there's a vague questioning or uncertainty, almost a discomfort with that. Then it's even a struggle at first to formulate what it is you actually want.
Shane: I think that, to add to what Joe was saying, about experiencing some degree of suffering or even becoming aware of just the unconscious suffering that you're going through and just trying to survive. I think that when you do lack an aim in the matter that we're speaking, your default mode is basically trying to survive, and that can be a pretty brutal way to live. It's feeling like trying to get water and trying to get by, a lot of people are experiencing all over the world, where is the meaning in that? ... I think that when there's a struggle to find some substance and to see that just getting by with those biological drives isn't enough and you want something more I think that can start formulating this desire for something more. To try to see the world in new ways and to understand yourself a bit; I think the self knowledge, gaining the self knowledge is a big part in just beginning to form an aim.
Harrison: What do you want? Oh, actually I have no idea, I've never thought about it before. I think maybe all of us have been there.
Elan: Well, from what you was saying Shane. If that thing about self knowledge and the attraction; this is what informs the aim, it's ineffable in a way, it does mean working towards an ideal. Even if we're never quite there, like Joe said a little earlier, the point is that where conscious awareness and input involved. It has as much to do with our own being and our own levels of being and improving ourselves in fulfilling an intention or a goal as seeing some kind of outward manifestation of it.
Joe: I think for most people on this planet, a good percentage of them, their aim quote on quote is to simply be in this life and to experience life. They go about doing that, that includes getting their biological needs getting met, includes food, shelter, all the very primitive things but also all of the other emotional, and psychological jollies that can be had as a human on planet Earth. All of those basic things that you see if you look at the news, you look at the celebrity section of some website and you see what's actually on offer, being presented to people as interesting or worthwhile, dedicating their time to sports, sports as an example fills needs for people. There's a need for a sense of community for some people, they can be made into complex things but ultimately it's quite easy to see how basic needs are being filled.
Most people are chasing that dream, chasing the American dream and that's enough for most people, but I think as Shane was saying, at a certain point some people get tired of that, or have had enough. Of course there can be quite a lot of suffering, trying to get your needs met on this planet, when people have had enough of that or have experienced enough of that suffering and the question in them arises of what is the point in all of this? That's kind of an existential angst or a questing that's deeper than superficial. Where they wonder what the point is in their struggles for getting their needs met, running into blocks and suffering for strange reasons and reasons that they don't really understand. Eventually when you've had enough of that, in many life times you come to a point that you ask that question or the question arises in you, what the hell am I doing? Why is this happening?
Just a vague questioning as to what the point of it all is, I think that's the doorway to having an aim but of course trying to find an aim the other side of that is not very easy because as you said, you look around you in this world and there isn't very much on offer in terms of a really valuable aim or something better and bigger and more meaningful to aspire to. That's why I think it's difficult to find an aim that is of that nature, but and it's possible that maybe that question in that context, in a vaguer more spiritual aim, something more than getting your physical needs met, there could be some weight to pursue an aim of that nature. For everybody who has that question, when it arises, is the aim for all those people the same? Or should it be the same?
Harrison: Hmm, well I think that you've identified the over arching aim that most people have, like right at the beginning of what you said there. Just kind of getting through life and all that entails, I think that is kind of like a default mode for most people, it's almost like when I think about an aim, the first image that comes to my mind is like a target, an archery target. So you've got a target that you're aiming towards, something directional. The way I see the overall aim of life, or humanity, it's this automatic by default mode of living, it goes in a certain direction.
What you guys, Shane and Joe are talking about, that the moment you start questioning that direction that you're heading in, it's like Ok what have I been doing my whole life and where am I going? That throws you into disarray; all of a sudden you become aimless because you've been going in this direction all your life and then all of a sudden you're like, do I really want to be heading down this road? Is there another road? Can I turn off at some point? Then you look around and you can't see any turn offs so it's like, what do you I do? What's the alternative? Where do I go?
Like you said it's not like we have aim training in school or you can go down to a shop downtown and get some advice on how to formulate and alternative aim to living the dominant lifestyle of life on planet Earth. It's not really something that's accessible, it's not like you can turn on the TV and find it and you have to look for it. That's the big problem, your life gets thrown into this turbulence and you're aimless, so where do you look for the alternative? I don't know.
Elan: Well it's a process isn't it? We might experience what Gurdjieff or Mouravieff would call a bankruptcy, we realize consciously we're at zero. We've experienced things that shown just how transient all of these things that we engage in to feed our egos, our false personalities, they don't really supply any kind of food for some part of us that is deeper. It's a difficult thing to describe except that, once you have found some substance, some knowledge of something, that you experience deeper or real in a way that's very different from what we're used to. There's a realisation or a little epiphany that's possible there.
We want more, and so it's kind of a path I think. I think part of that path is determined by what our conscious intentions are, maybe some of us have had thoughts at certain times in our life of what we intend or our goals are, that aren't worldly or meant to satisfy our whims, egos or personalities. So everything that informs that intention, that direction, that purpose, that helps us to find meaning, step by step becomes this pathway towards finding an aim.
Harrison: You brought up the idea of it being conscious, I think that if I look at my life as an example; I think it started out just as something very unconscious. It was something that I could just feel, a general malaise and searching for something. I didn't know what I was looking for but I just randomly was searching around and eventually I found some things that really changed my life, so to start out it was more like I don't really know what I'm looking for I just know I'm looking for something. As time goes on, I kind of look back and I realize I really had no idea what I was looking for and now I've got more of an idea, I can actually formulate it more consciously. I think to start out it felt more like Neil in the Matrix, all of sudden something wasn't right in Neil's character in the Matrix and he could feel it. Then he had that encounter with Trinity and Morpheus and that changed his perception, that's kind of what it feels like.
There's just this general, at least for me, dissatisfaction with what's going on with my life and the direction it's going and what my general pursuits are. Just that feeling of wanting something more, there's something more to this, and then actually finding something that I can actually identify with that. Then I can more consciously formulate, what is it that I'm actually looking for, I think that one example from me, an over arching direction that has been increasingly conscious, I can't claim to be a fully conscious being in the sense we're talking about here. But for me it's an ideal as one example for truth, that in itself opens up a whole lot of areas in my life and I think a lot of people's lives, what does that mean when you get into it, that has so many ramifications for all aspects of your life, where does it end? What might that entail? What might have to change in your life in order to come closer to that, or to be true to that as an aim?
Harrison: One thing you said Joe, just before we go on with that, you said something like well should everyone's aim be the same? Just quickly I wanted to comment on that I don't think so, I think for everyone going in a certain direction, whatever direction they're going that's probably right for them at that time. If it ever comes to the point where they have that aimlessness, there's that branch in the road, there's that option to choose that different aim, and I don't think there's nothing that says everyone should have this aim. You should be this way, what you're doing is wrong; it's just where you find yourself in life at the moment. For a lot of people they seem perfectly happy to be going in one direction or another and it really just comes down to that choice and that moment.
Joe: I'm not sure if I'd disagree with you or not. I would say that more than everybody having to have, or that everybody should have the same aim, I think everybody does has the same aim.
Harrison: Ok, can you go into that?
Joe: The aim that everybody has, whether they know it consciously or not, is to understand the meaning of life.
Harrison: Hmm, ok yeah.
Joe: People, who are even not consciously pursuing that aim, are still pursuing that unconsciously because they're alive and they're learning through their life experiences. They are, through some way or another, unconsciously or whatever, absorbing lessons and learning about life, therefore by default that is the aim that is given, has been given apparently to everybody who was born a human being. To figure out what life is about, and that's what I was hinting at earlier on, you get to this point where you question that aim that has been given to you that you're maybe not aware of, it finally creeps up into consciousness. You then ask the question, "what is the meaning of life?" of course that can mean all sorts of different directions, there's a large area of life, particularly in the present day or in the past, in the modern area, there's many people offering answers to the meaning of life. Of course it's been around for a long of time in the form of Religion, but that's very basic. In fact you can see the very existence of Religion, heaven, hell, God etc. is argued for what I just said, is that the aim of all human being is to figure out what the meaning of life is all about. There is this explanation of what the meaning of life is that is offered to people and a lot of people over the course of most of human existence have signed up to some Religion or other to have that question answered for them. Of course that's kind of the same field of the aim being given to you, without your conscious awareness and also the answer that is being given to you without you having the opportunity to have explored it yourself.
I've been running around this planet for the past few hundred years, several life times, and it's getting a bit tiring and I'm going to ask the question what is the meaning of life, I get the point here, all this experience has been thrown in my face over several life times. I get the point that I'm meant to be figuring out what life is all about, Ok now I'm ready to ask the question. And then three steps in, we have the answer for you. That's premade as well, that's a bit of a cop out as well because none of it is really conscious, there' a conscious asking of the questions but there's no the conscious answering of the questions for yourself.
Of course in this day and age, there are alternatives to Religion in the forms of the new age movement and all different theories around that, that people can get into. When I think about your own life, I'm sure this is true for most people, if I think about my own life, it's pretty clear that course of my life, if I just wanted to stand or experience the course of my life is already set out for me before I was born. You were born into a family, you grew up with friends, you have experiences, you become an adult, and you get an education, look for a job. As soon as you have a job, I think in most places of the world, the next thing you do is look for a Wife or a Husband, then you have some children and then you watch them grow up and watch them go through education, then you grow old and you die. That is the life as it's pretty much set up for everybody on this planet.
As I was saying earlier on, a lot of people find that to be good enough. They find enough diversion in that picture of that plan.
Niall: They find enough opportunities to learn within that.
Joe: Right, within that program there's enough for them to learn and it's diverting or entertaining enough or it feeds them enough in terms of what they need in their experiences.
Niall: It's real enough
Joe: Yeah, but I suppose in terms of reincarnation if you've done that many times, at a certain point in one of those lives you may eventually go, "This again, really!?"
Harrison: It's getting old
Joe: Yeah it's getting old, of course you don't think about it that way but I think the way it manifests in people is a kind of apathy towards engaging fully plan, that standard plan that's been set up for most people.
Niall: That's half heartedness...
Joe: about seeking for something else, that seeking is the key part because that seeking is what leads to ask that question and to look for other answers to the meaning of life. They've come to this conclusion, "This really can't be all there is, this isn't floating my boat anymore and I'm wondering if there's another option, is there a plan B that I could go for maybe?" and that questioning is the first step to an aim.
The reason I question about the idea of aim and the way we talk about aim, of course I think the way this show has been titled, the use of the word aim is quite specific. I think that means a conscious aim that almost by default rejects the standard plan, life plan that is set out for most people. Or at least is not happy with that, is not happy with only that and looks for something more.
Shane: Just a little earlier Joe you mentioned how a purpose can be pre packaged and pre made by Religion for example. It strikes me that the controlling pathological elite, they do have this direction that they're trying to put on the populous and that it's really effective because people don't really have a defined aim in their own lives. It also strikes me that you're just living under this pathological system that, just how much it does kill curiosity and those elements of seeking that are a part of what it means to be human..
Harrison: Those pre packaged ideas, they may also close off certain goals or aims because when it comes down to it, they're false, and they're not true. Just one obvious example to me is; if we look at Christianity, what many people believe is that their true purpose of a Christian, ultimately they'll be the rapture. It's all about faith in Jesus and all you have to do is say the words and you're saved, and then your spot in heaven is secure. These people they may have some awareness that they're lurking towards something and that may be getting raptured up to Heaven with Jesus, but the way that the whole theology is set up and designed, it's not going to happen. It just doesn't map to reality, it's just not true. Not only is it a problem...
Joe: That's another unconscious aim that you could define for most people other than getting their unconscious biological needs met. The other aim is that most people seem to have and it seems to be genetic to human beings, is to save their ass from dying. They're very much unaware of this because think about their own mortality or their own death, I think it's a latent murmuring or whispering from their subconscious. It's a fear of death, that's what Religion serves, the possibility to save yourself or be saved, or escape Death. That in itself is potentially a good thing because as you were saying Harrison, if it wasn't for the foamy mainstream religions and what they offer, that fear of death can open people up to questioning life and death, their own mortality and the idea of immortality, the idea of living on after death.
That can open people up to a major aim that is unconscious to most people, but if it's made conscious then it can lead to an exploration of spiritual questions, spiritual concepts, ideas and then hopefully figuring out which is true, which of those ideas are true, which are false, which map to reality and which don't. Getting to the truth of the matter; trying to get to the truth to the matter of about ultimately human existence. That's very important and maybe a central aim, if anybody ever gets to the point of having a conscious aim that is of some importance, or major importance of significance, more so than the primal need ones.
Harrison: It has a way of jumbling things up inside, like when you think about death, "Ok well, I am going to die, how does that change that I see my life now as it is?" and what I'm going to be doing with my life. It really inspires a total a reappraisal of the things that you value in your life because the things that you value will then determine or effect to a large degree your actions, the kinds of relationships you make, the things you do for others and even your so called life aims like the little things that you do in life every day. Short term and long term, what you do every day for yourself and the people around you, what you're working towards in this life on the planet. The things that could be as something as mundane as your job, how does your job and what you do everyday fit into this new way that you're seeing this world, the new things you've come to value and see as truly important. More important than what you valued before which might have just been the biological stuff, or the fitting into your peer group or the groups society provides for you, up until this point.
That will have, like I was hinting at before, a lot of ramifications and how you live from now on.
Shane: This idea of using death or facing the reality of death, it can focus attention when a loved one dies or when you're looking at all the suffering that's going on in the world that really focuses attention. One of the difficulties, I think that we experience when we are beginning to struggle with life as it is, is that our attention is so diverted and our attention goes from one small thing to another small thing. It leaves little room for bigger things, so if we can focus our attention in the direction that we want to go in, when we do look at death we're looking at why are we here, why are we living. It actually can focus on life, I think, as well.
That can provide a desire to have a purpose in life. One of the questions or one of the issues I wanted to get into, is why is the purpose of this discussion... on a lot of the shows, we talk about politics and the world news, how does that relate? The overall discussion of having an aim seems to be having something in pursuit in human development. So how does news and politics relate to that? I think for many people, their separate issues, following the news might be a hobby or an interest or something to engage in life, debating with other people. But it's not really seen often as a means of human development.
Elan: I think part of the answer to that is what these leaders of the world are actually doing, what motivates them. What their pseudo aims are what their objectives are. Of course the type of aim that I think we're getting at here, ideally, is quite different from what we read about most often, where these leaders are only struggling to satisfy, so much as they are struggling, they're only working towards achieving goals that serve that part of their personality or their egos.
Harrison: The pocket book.
Elan: That and their thirst for power, and this kind of high that might accompany this perceived achievement of power by taking over another country, by doing things in an under handed way that really hurt other people. So we're seeing these things happening at large and also examining, I think, another dimension to all this which is what do people experience, what kind of struggle is involved with the person who is looking for something all together different, from what we're reading about and geopolitical events?
It does require struggle, it does require looking at those things inside of ourselves, those things that we do, those things that we think and feel that don't meet the ideal that we would like for ourselves in growing as individuals and being good for others.
Joe: I would like to make a suggestion. The leaders and countries, leaders of countries in general will tell you, and believe they're practicing the objective in making people happy. Just to make that clear, at least superficially, their aim is the same as anyone's is to be happy. The result may be atrocious, especially in this day and age, but if you look at going back 100 years, what was that guy's name that - Edward Bernays (a nephew of Sigmund Freud) - the whole thing of beginning, of advertising in a big way, public relations and so on.
I mean, they really thought when they were applying these new cooperate models, advertisements for a consumer society they thought this is what people want. They are projecting a lot of their own needs; not just the needs of other people but the leaders of the world are doing the same as everyone else, which is trying to be happy. To get their personal needs met, which equals happiness I suppose. It's primitive, there's a Harvard study that tracked several generations of people and from the youth all the way to, some of them are still alive, it's been going on for many generations. It's still open, new people add to it all the time, based on a series of questionnaires throughout people's lives, something like 85% of participants, when they entered the experiment in the beginning that their aim in life, what they want out of life is money. But by the time they're older, the majority say what made me happiest in life and it shows in their answers in the questionnaires is, that they had good relationships with other people. In the process of life you discover worthier aims, but then at the beginning it's the more primitive, and then you forget them.
I think people never really forget, I think they keep it and diversions may keep the averred a vague recollection but the problem is when they're born again they're bombarded with the same propaganda, which says money and fame.
Niall: I think I'll put relationships as an aim; maybe your aim is to find your tribe. Of all tribes, when people take an interest in anything what will it will inevitably lead to, it will lead to cooperation in life which is based around whatever it is that interests you. It may be deep in the sense of actually living with other people who think the same way as you, or maybe simply that you have a shared hobby or interest with other academics or other workers.
Joe: I think in terms of answering Shane's questioning in what the point of looking at what's going on in the planet, physically socially culturally. Paying attention to all of that, how that fits into pursuing an aim, because that's something that we do and it's part of the aim that we pursue. I think it's pretty obvious, I think the answer to that is if you have the question, the big question inside you that's latent inside you, it may rise in you, what is the meaning of life? What is life? Life is what happens on this planet.
If you want to answer that question at least partly, or take the first step in answering that question you need to look and pay attention to what is happening with the life on this planet, because you're a part of it. You don't know how you got here, but you got dumped here, here you are, dropped in the middle of it, so let's assume reasonably that you fit here, that this is the place for you. You looked at all the other people, you've got the same number of eyes and legs, you're not an alien, you seem to have the same needs and those needs can be fulfilled by what's available on this planet.
So let's say fit here, therefore if you want to understand at least in part, the meaning of your own existence on this planet, well then you need to pay attention to what is happening on this planet and why it happens, and what it's really all about. But of course, there's a whole level of manipulation and deception in terms of what goes on in this planet, what happens at the level of the leaders or controllers, the rulers of this world and what they say they're doing and what they're really doing. So there's a lot of discovery to be had there, a lot of investigation to be engaged in to figure out what the real meaning of life is at least on the level of what happens and why on this planet. And then figure out yourself to a certain extent, because you fit here.
Shane: It seems that that element is really missing from a lot of spiritual practices, mostly it's just to focus on self knowledge and not really looking at the world at large when you do need both. They complement each other, and it's easy to get consumed with your own stuff, but when you look outside yourself and at the world and seeing how you respond to it, it's really that application that is a means of self work.
Harrison: I think that, what you're saying Shane about the new age perspective, when you look at that kind of philosophy and that way of life, there isn't really anything in it that really values truth. It's pretty much, here's the latest self help new age teaching or book, and that seems to me like it's simply designed to make people feel good, it'll provide that pseudo aim for them but really it's just this feed-back loop that reinforces their own illusions and makes you feel good about it. When you value truth in any one area in your life, it's almost like it creates a contradiction or attention or something is in conflict when you refuse to look at truth at other areas of reality.
When you have the ideal for truth that is all encompassing, if you value truth or objectivity then you can't just say, 'well ok I only want to look at truth of this small area of life and knowledge, and reality and then everything else, I'm totally OK believing in these lies', because that creates this internal contradiction, maybe there's a part of that is an over arching aim for most people. There is this movement, this pull towards truth but when we cut off, when we segment reality into these little portions and we only look at one area, it doesn't work that way because truth is all encompassing, you either value truth or you don't.
If you value truth then that means finding truth everywhere and in all things. Politics is a big part of that, if you value truth and you're going around the world believing everything you see on the News every night, then right there that's a deep contradiction because you're not valuing truth because you're accepting. You're just letting in lies from what's going on in the world and you're not valuing the truth. Just looking at it from that perspective in your own life, like "I want to find the true meaning of existence" - well that means you value truth and that entails being aware of what's going on around you. Even for very practical purposes because if you don't know what's going on around you, that can very much hinder how you live your life, it can hinder how you will continue to move towards fulfilling or living out your aim. If you're living in a country that is ripe for disaster and the signs are there, what you want to do would be better done not in a warzone, then you could get out or you could stay and be totally blind to reality and be dead in a week.
Even that can come down to just the very basic biological level, but of course also just knowing what's going on just for the sake of knowing the truth because there are so many lies and I think truth has value in so many different ways that even just speaking truth to an obvious lie has some kind of weight or meaning or value, not only for the individual doing it but for the people around them.
Elan: I think that's a good point, that when we block out truth from any one area, of course it's impossible to be all-knowing about all things we simply have our limitations. But when we wilfully behave ignorantly towards things, especially when we have billboards or signs dropping on our heads that tell us, "Hey, this is something to be aware of, this behaviour might be affecting a person around you" or it could be regarding anything. This kind of blockage, it suggests a blockage to other things as well.
(Technical connection difficulties begin)
Joe: So apparently some people can talk to us in here, let's keep keeping on. Carry on.
Harrison: Ok Elan, we interrupted you there, do you remember what you were saying?
(End of technical connection difficulties)
Elan: Well just basically affirming that when we wilfully ignorant about things, and block ourselves off from certain fields of knowledge, or at least not being open and saying ok this is something that I can look into, or should look into because I'm getting messages, I'm responding to my environment and to people around me who are pointing out something to me. This is something that works against having an aim I think, because that the type of aim that we're talking about here, by its very nature brings up resistances for all sorts of reasons. We have programmed responses to certain things; we might believe that we have the corner on one area of knowledge when we really don't.
It goes back to that expression of, one cup being too filled, we want to have ears to hear and eyes to see, and have space within ourselves to continue to question, to continue to be open to information that helps us with our aim and our ideals. That very process, as difficult as it may seem at some times, I think is a big part of that.
Harrison: One of the things I got out of that is that even if we have an aim formulated for ourselves, there probably are all kinds of things that we're doing, all kinds of things that we believe, so these might be deeply held unconscious believes. They maybe habits of just the way we live our lives, and the way we go about doing things and interacting with others. Those unconscious things, even though we've got this aim allegedly will subvert that aim, it's almost like you're trying to build a computer and you've got the wrong parts, you think you've got the right parts. It's just not working, because what you need to do in that case, having that aim entails bringing all this stuff up, analysing every bit and piece and to see what works and what doesn't.
What may you be holding onto that is making achieving that aim, or just being in alignment with that aim impossible. What do you need to do, what do you need to uncover and analyse in order to make it possible.
Elan: I think part of the problem there is that we don't really have in our vocabulary and in our thinking, any kind of instruction or experience, or information that's just what an aim really is. What do we have? We have super heroes on movie screens that their aim is to be do-gooders, our typical heroes in books and protagonists, and I think we give a very short thrift to what it means to struggle; or to be at a hero's journey or an aimer's journey. With Politicians, if they admit to making a mistake or to anything of that sort, it's interpreted as weakness, not as strength of character.
This whole idea of what an aim really is, and what's involved I think, we just don't have a very good idea of it or we haven't had a very good idea of it until we have really examined what it really means to have an aim. So, we're following all of these superficial models that hint, it's like two or three steps removed from what an experience of engaging an aim may really be like. We are dealing in the abstract a little bit, but I think we can only come at this step by step, like a bunch of people touching an elephant and reading parts of it and describing it to ourselves a little bit. But that's part of the process, that's what we have to do.
Shane: It seems that just the process of having an aim and seeking it, points out just how broken our own nature is. As you were saying Harrison about these computer parts, we have a lot of parts in us that constantly take us away from that aim, that's useful knowledge to have, to see and experience. It points out the things that we need to work on, and having that aim as a back bone can help really motivate us to really work on those things that come up. It might start out by seeing a particular feeling or a program or issue that you struggle with, we forget ourselves and fall into those patterns. That self knowledge is useful when we come back and redirect ourselves to our aim, a small aim right now if for me to work on this issue. Eventually I think it grows, where we need to work on multiple things simultaneously, like treating the whole.
Harrison: I think the first step is to just acknowledge that broken part, so for me to be able to say I've got a busted flux capacitor and I know that I've got it, and the first thing is really to accept it as a reality because if you look at just the number of people that you probably know in your life, let's say someone who just has anger problems and you might point it out to them. You'll say, "you're really angry" and they'll say, "I don't get angry" and that's one thing about their life that is totally obvious that they just haven't seen in themselves, haven't even acknowledged because the first step is, and it's often a hard one, to see yourself just at a level of, ok this is what I'm actually like in this particular area, I do this, I do have this problem.
Then it's a matter of actually actively working on it, even just getting to the point of being able to accept that we are broken, we do have parts that don't work as well as they should, maybe we have the wrong part in there, that in itself is a struggle.
Shane: The thing that really stinks here is that the flux capacitor that is broken is usually our thinking, our everyday thinking about things. Our thinking is really skewed and this is where it really helps to have good knowledge of the cognitive sciences and psychology of the self, and how we respond. What really drives us, often times this thinking that is driving us, we're not really aware of what's going on behind the scenes. It's these unconscious motivations that pop up and drive us and we get carried away with.
Elan: I have a question; can having an aim be a powerful thing? Can it empower us? Can it motivate us in the midst of struggle?
Niall: Can I just say something. I think we need to state something that hasn't been stated, that when you talk about an aim singular here. We're talking about knowing yourself; this is why we're talking about unconscious drives giving a glimpse of seeing what you're really like and so on. Knowing yourself is the aim, right?
Joe: Somebody mentioned Gurdjieff in passing, but no one has actually mentioned this idea. It's similar to understand the meaning of life; you can't understand the meaning of life without understanding yourself being a part of life. One of the listeners in the chat rooms said, their aim in life, or one of their aims is to be a better person. That's a good aim, but it requires to know yourself obviously, the process of understanding yourself if you want to be a better person, even having that as an aim suggests that you have already identified some aspects of yourself as a living person, alive, that you want to change or you want to improve. You also have identified things that are possible to improve, it's a reflective process, and it requires you to understand some aspects of yourself.
So many people don't, they don't even question their own motivations to why they do things, a lot of people don't even question why they continue to get into trouble or have problems in life, and they just repeat the same mistakes over and over again. I think there's a mechanism where eventually you get tired of making the same mistake over and over and then you question: why is this happening, why am I doing this? Why does this keep happening to me? You're automatically reflecting back on yourself on your own actions, you're doing a bit of self analysis, and that is the process of knowing yourself. You're one step towards the road of knowing yourself. In terms of Shane's question, why you would look at the world, you look at the world around you; you're part of a human race, what's happening with the human race. What are they doing collectively and why am I amongst them? Is there anything that they're doing that I can identify, that has reflection within me? You'd assume it does. What's the nature of human beings?
As you observe the planet and then what's your own nature, does your own nature jive with that or does it move away from that, can you see any problems with it etc. In terms of lands, a question of the power you have; yes it can because it's something, assuming it's a meaningful aim but even if it's not, it's something to get you up out of bed in the morning. Depending on the situation, the reason you don't want to get out of bed but certainly in the way we're talking about it, having a life aim of being a better person, or having better relationships with other people or understanding yourself more. That process of understanding yourself more can very much provide support and strength to you as you progress in understanding yourself and getting over issues and solving problems within your life. One of the biggest de motivators in your life is to repeatedly have problems, not knowing how to get over and not know how to deal with them. But as you push forward in trying to push through this aim of changing your life, changing the way you think and act, etc. then yeah that's a big motivation.
Along with an aim, if your aim involves a broader understanding of life and meaning, and you've gained some insight into that, that can stand by you, and be a source of strength in trying times. If you consider what's going on in the world today and how horrible it is, it can be frightening and scary, make you feel a little bit insecure. Having an understanding of the meaning of life, its part of your aim to understand in the first place, that can support you in making sense of what is going on in the world and provide some context, an explanation of it. You can explain it to yourself in some way and understand it can help to swain the fear and insecurity that a world doing a few spins around the toilet bowl, as ours seems to be, can provoke them people.
Shane: Well with Elan's question about how an aim can be a powerful, motivating force, just going into Niall's description about how self knowledge is an initial requirement I guess for that. When we are first learning about ourselves, continually learning about ourselves, we're faced with all these contradictions and hypocrisies that we think about ourselves, we build our image up in one way and then we get a better perspective. Usually from others, about whom we really are and I think it takes a bit of courage to face those things, and a bit of struggle. I think it's that struggle, Gurdjieff talked about it in terms of conscious suffering that can really be really motivating, you're one way and you see yourself a different way, when you see yourself objectively as you are, it can feel crushing to see your own faults and failings. Just all the different unconscious things that are driving you, how that's caused, not only pain in your own life, but in other people's too. I think facing that can be extremely motivating, I think that speaks for that too.
Elan: That seems to be inherent in having an aim, it's to, as much as possible, be conscious of what the struggle is and to seek answers. Have that drive to continue on, because when we do have struggles, when we are faced with a barrier or friction or any of those things, there's some part of us, that blockage or whatever you want to call it that says, "I don't want to do this anymore, this hurts too much, this is painful, I don't get this, therefore I don't get anything". Our minds come up with all these messages that seek to distract us or direct us away from the process of pursuing the aim. We fall into black and white thinking, having an aim doesn't mean that we're perfect, we don't even know what perfection is we can only really try and pursue excellence, or improvement. That's really where we're at; I don't think we can afford to fall into black and white thinking when we are pursuing an aim.
Shane: In talking about motivation, it also strikes me that having a big aim rather than a small aim that does seem to tie into different motivations inside us. If we're driven by say something like people pleasing, or things of our lower nature, those are unconscious, it's easy to get frustrated, engaging in negative emotions, they come up and you're driven by that. I think if you have a higher aim or a bigger aim, like in mind and you use that, it can, I don't want to say bypasses it, but it makes those lower drives less impactful on the behaviour that you're pursuing.
Joe: Can I just jump in there? I think we have a call on the line here. Do we have a caller on the line?
Caller: Hey, hi! This is Andrew, good to be on the show. Interesting topic as always.
Joe: Andrew you were saying in the Chat room that you had some comments, yes?
Andrew: Yeah, maybe I could use the example of relationships. So much of how we experience reality is based on our environment, the problem is that the average person does not take the time or energy to work together to change the environment. So we're constantly faced with the frustrations as you just mentioned that no one is taking the responsibility or perhaps doesn't know how to respond, doesn't have the response ability to be able to change the environment. If we look at just relationships as the example, a lot of people are fearful of relationships, maybe I shouldn't sleep with someone, people will say well that's because you don't want to get hurt, right? Now what are the factors that could cause someone to get hurt? You could have a baby out of wedlock, and why is that a problem? Now we can look into things like economy and resources, someone in the chat room is saying sound is gone, so where did I leave off?
Joe: Just keep going
Andrew: Ok, so, somebody else might say well you can't have relationships with just anyone because you might get a disease, once again you could go look at naturopathic medicine vs. allopathic medicine and also disease control. You look at something like mosquitoes and how in some areas they've been completely able to wipe out Malaria, and then you get all these things about you've got to be really careful if you want to actually get together with somebody because people have deep emotions and it's a deep binding thing. Somebody might actually have huge problems afterwards if you're just keeping it casual or whatever it might be, and then once again where does that come from? What are all the magazine covers telling people? Why are people feeling so insecure? Etc., Etc.
You go and look at a tribe like the Zoe tribe in the Amazon; they don't have any of those issues. This is very radical concept for anyone in the West because over something like 2000 years, approximately we've had the influence of people like St. Augustine in our psyche, in the group mind. Which, basically demonise sexuality for the most part, then we ask ourselves the question how many people out of frustration and desperation all of these vices because of the imbalance, and then end up getting put into situations where they're frustrated, or they're even in worse situations because they're acting out so something bad is happening.
Because of this imbalance, that's taken advantage of by the construct further by example imprisoning a person for life because perhaps they made a mistake where they instead of getting the psychological counselling and assistance, society change, that person is now totally and utterly, their life is over. It's a touchy subject, because it's an emotionally driven subject and it goes to the very construct. We're talking about fractional reserved thinking, we're talking about perception and world view, and we're talking about the construct of our reality. Let's say for example somebody is caught looking into somebody else's back wall, looking at someone sunbathing naked, they get caught and now they get a criminal record or being, whatever.
You can take as terrible or as simplistic as you like, is it due to somebody being lonely? I think it's a very good example of how taking it from the core, out, how is our reality constructed? How should we be re-organizing or re -evaluating our reality, how it functions and why.
Joe: Yeah, can you sum that up in one paragraph?
Andrew: In one paragraph, people natural inclination to be human, ok, our human emotions and biological functions and mind sets and desires, etc. They're all manipulated in general, I could go into chocolate bars, you walk into the store, or coca cola, all the things that are inside fruit that are designed to just give you enough to make an apple extracted are now overloaded. You could take pornography as the same issue, it's overloading people because they have lack of human contact, and it's everywhere. All of human desire, everything that is good about humanity is being imbalanced and then... exploited. We're doing enough to change that, we're not opening up the conversation; we're not talking about these big issues in general.
Joe: That's because it's addictive for people
Andrew: But also it's a substitute, it's not the best, it's unbalanced. If you were having regular human relationships with people that actually cared about you, you wouldn't need pornography, if you were eating properly and eating a balanced diet you wouldn't want coca cola. If you gave coca cola to somebody living in a jungle, they'd say," What is this disgusting thing you're giving to me, it tastes like poison". Of course for our mind sets, we're thinking how could that be? Because it's so normal in our reality to have this manipulated imbalance. There's something I've been thinking about, it's metaphysical and a very challenging thing because I was brought up as a Christian. As I'm looking at the differences in some tribes, the nuclear family is very good for civilisation but is it perfect for human beings? Can we learn something from tribal people?
Joe: Absolutely! They're all good points, but the problem is what do you do about it, there doesn't seem to be very much that everybody can do about it at least on a global scale, because so many people seem to be happy enough, or it's not bad enough for the majority of people on this planet to have those conversations and to do something about it. The best thing we can do, is that the people that do have a problem with those social norms and that way of living, they should get together and formulate a new way of living and live the way they want to live, the way they think is a better way to live. Let the chips fall where they're made, ultimately it's not up to us to change the entire planet and the experience of life for everybody on the planet because there is such a thing as free will. Even though we can objectively say that these poisons in food and horrible social conditions and relationships, objectively aren't good for anybody, they don't seem to be bad enough for a lot of people to want to do something about it.
Andrew: I think what we're looking at is scientific frustration, to the point where everything is being manipulating at just the right point to make sure that everyone's complacent enough in various countries and regions where change could occur. People have enough resources and time to actually, if they chose to do so, change things, but as you just mentioned, they don't. The vast majority are living in massive poverty and lack of education that they don't even know where to begin to start; it's a huge well managed human farm. Obviously, they're absolutely destructive to the whole planet. Another thing I would mention is that, for example just for people who are interested in living longer, there are much higher level medical things available now where coming back to the disease aspect, we don't have to be living with the disease that we're living with, but once again the debates or discussion around these things isn't of interest in the human psyche in general.
It's sort of like I want to be able to get a holiday home in the Bahamas. There's nothing wrong with that but, I want to focus on just what I've been marketed, because that's what interests my psyche the most. I could live to 120 almost definitely if I age a certain way with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, maybe I could invent something for humanity or change something if I had enough time. That apparently doesn't enter to many conversations; I think we should be speaking every week about those things.
Joe: I think you're not allowed to do those things. People come up with things to change for the better, human society and experience for the better. If there's any potential to really do that, we find the best interest in positions of power that come down on it and stop it from happening. I'm not saying that people themselves just love to roll around in the mud and live horrible disconnected lives, but the thing is there is a system that seems to be preventing human evolution from going in a better direction, and it seems that those are the rules of the game. Each person has to struggle against that and make a choice for themselves or are they going to buck the system in that sense and find out how to live better lives. It seems that it's just not possible, it's been tried over and over again by many people...
Andrew: We're on SOTT today, you guys are once a week, its Saturday everybody's available. Why not have a segment of the show on Medical crowd funding, or getting everybody the assistance that they need and what's available, segment that off and say how many listeners can actually contribute to creating awareness. If you're on the internet and you're not able to donate something in terms of stored energy, unfortunately in a way of dollars, at least it's something to donate. If you're not able to donate something, why not get 10 other people that can to donate. To the project, it'd potentially help human beings. There are so many things that can be cured and treatments that are available. Apparently in Japan for years, they've been curing various diseases that are apparently still seeking cures in USA. Japans hospitals have entire floors designated to alternative therapies, but apparently it doesn't work in different places in the world. With enough crowd funding, we could do something but we don't do anything. We talk about a lot of things and that's awesome, but let's focus in, let's figure out what's real and what's not real, we talk about climate change, people say, "these climate change deniers!" - I'm like no, climate exists - In the morning it can be quite chilly, in the evening it can be hotter - that's climate change. As to whether or not the earth is heating up to the point of we all have to give contacts to the ruling elite, apparently we might fry, let's just pay for extra carbon to try and reduce it and not use Nikola Tesla's inventions apparently that makes sense to some people, but shouldn't we have that debate, whether we can crowd fund things? Whether we can lift critical mass, actually formulate the platforms needed to be able to push these things through?
Joe: There's no doubting that we should and these are all very good ideas. The problem is getting a large number of people to follow you, enough to make those kinds of changes that you're talking about; it seems to be very difficult. One of the major reasons for that is because people have a natural inclination to look to authority for what is and what is not good for us.
Andrew: Well that's why you have to become the authority; I mean SOTT is already quite an authority on Radio, in good information! If you have sub projects inside of this SOTT, I mean if everyone of those 32 people 100 people on their email list "Listen, there's this thing that's going on, say for example hyperbaric therapy which can heal a number of aliments and also is very good for enhancing people's lives right across the board." at least 2 or 3 out of that 100 might reply, if one person does the same thing they might get the same. We can't sit on our hands and say, well you know, it just hasn't happened yet, I don't know if we should be doing it because it hasn't happened yet. It's kind of like circular reasoning in a sense, I appreciate your point of view and your frustration but I really think you guys have got the platform to do it. I don't see anyone else with the quality of discussion without the alternative media hype that comes from so many of these doom and gloom, religious, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Religion, but it's sort of very intense, oh god we're all going to die. That's not what I get from SOTT, so I really hope that you guys consider it. I can maybe jump on next weekend to say," Hi" perhaps with your new website and new radio scheme that you guys are putting up, there could be some progress.
Joe: Yeah, check it out! Our Sunday nights show is on tomorrow night, blog talk radio, and the other guys will follow. Tonight's show will follow, are you still there Andrew?
Harrison: We lost him.
Joe: He buggered off. Maybe Andrew didn't know we have another health and wellness show on a Friday. The guys that do that show have a lot of information, pretty much everything about alternative health and have tried it themselves and know people who have tried it. It's a really great show, there's loads of good stuff in the archive shows of the Health and wellness show on Friday's. We do what we can, we spread the information, we don't actively tell people, send this link round to 100 of your friends or whatever, because we also understand that people who are interested in this kind of thing may have 100 friends but 99 of them aren't interested. We don't want to be sending round stuff to people who aren't interested or might get you into trouble.
Niall: Andrew has come to the place where everyone comes at some point or another, which is, I see the state of the world, it's absolutely awful, now what are we going to do about it? Ok I know what I can do, no wait, that won't work so I'll try something else. I'll try this, that I'll try that. That's good, great.
Harrison: I think a lot of things that Andrew brought up, implicitly we've been talking about this show and these are the issues... if we've got this aim for self knowledge, it's inevitably we run up against them and we need to analyse them and look at them. That has to do with the level of social control, the ways in which we are manipulated and the lies which are forced fed us. Then to look at our own nature, and how we interact with the world, they're just all issues that need to be looked at on this path. Like you were saying, Joe, not everyone looks at these things, we can't really expect to look at them because, just look at the world. It' doesn't work so we just have to do whatever we can do, we try and do that. We've got the shows, the Health and wellness show, we've all got face book and twitter pages where we share with our immediate social groups, we put the word out publicly. We engage in all sorts of projects, it's just another brick in the wall.
Joe: We all from personal experience how hard it is to convince anybody something that they are not interested in, or it goes against their own beliefs. Or certainly is goes against authorities for example, I have a lot of experience of trying to tell people about health, medical alternatives or different things that they can cater for different elements and it's a real struggle. If that's not what their doctor is telling them, and then they have a serious problem of trying something that isn't sanctioned by authority effectively and these are well meaning people who are not closed minded by any normal standards at all. But they have an issue with it because they're fairly happy with it.
Niall: They're actually very educated people.
Joe: They're happier with authority telling them, the comfort of having authority telling them what to do, rather than being asked by me or somebody else to step outside that paradigm of authority and questioning everything you know. Effectively taking responsibility for yourself, people don't want to take responsibility for themselves. All of those things that Andrew was talking about, would require people to assume a certain level of responsibility that right now is, being taken by authority. For a lot of people that's a scary thing to do, to try and take that responsibility on their shoulders and there's a very few people who will do that. If you don't understand human psychology in the way the human mind works, and this genetic human need for authority, you're not going to meet with a lot of success. That is maybe the primary thing that stops people in the world from doing what Andrew would like them to do, which is getting all together and sorting the world out and saying, "this is all wrong, stupid, why are we doing this?" Because they would have to take the responsibility for it; and they don't want to do that because it's very comfortable to have an authority who takes the responsibility for you.
We do what we can to the extent to we can do it, and we hope, or expect that we look to people who are able to take that responsibility and to feel a bit of their own sovereignty to join us and contribute to what we're trying to do. We have plenty of experience of the fact, at this point, what we're offering is really not appealing to large numbers of people, by large numbers I mean at least half the population of the World, the kind of numbers that would be necessary to really change global society. Even if we're suffering, or they realise there's a lot of things wrong, they're not willing to dismiss or pull down that authority just to change that they'd prefer to have a shitty society and keep the authority, rather than the prospect of having a better society, in their minds, not having authority r having to have responsibility for those things that authorities are responsible for. That's a basic aspect of human nature; with change ultimately it comes to free will.
Harrison: We were planning on a little bit of shorter show today, so I think we can end it there. What do you guys have planned for tomorrow?
Joe: We're going to get back into a bit of Russophrenia. Do you know what it is?
Elan: It sounds like Rustle mania!
Joe: No it's Russophrenia, it's kind of a syndrome where you believe that Russia is a decrepit aging commie state, a reinvention ... on the brink of collapse, but also at the same time about to take over the world
Elan: Are you trying to tell me that's not true? (Laughter)
Joe: It's not true that Russia is about to collapse and take over the world at the same time, no. (Laughter)
A lot of people in Washington, London and Brussels adhere to this belief you know? and the things that they're talk about that Russia has been insignificant nation, that it shouldn't even been bothered about. At the same time, after you've said that, you hysterically scream that Russia is about to take over the world and we need to have another 17 trillion dollars so we can defend against the Russian's taking over the world.
Mainly just an update of what's going on in the Middle East may be a relatively short show. We haven't talked about it in a while and we just want to put some ideas out there and clarify something because it seems like a lot of people out there are losing their head to a certain extent, or have lost their heads in terms of being able to be objective about the situation
Harrison: We look forward to it. Thanks to everyone for tuning in, thanks to Joe and Niall for calling in and sharing their thoughts with us, and thanks to Andrew for calling in. Tune in tomorrow, as Joe said it'll be on SOTT radio so they'll be a link to redirect tomorrow, to check out the show and the new format. We hope that what we've talked about is an interesting and maybe even prompted some self analyses, maybe even appeared to your own aims and your own aim in life. How you're there, and how you're not there yet and how you get there. Thanks to everyone, we'll see you all again next week.
Elan: Thanks for listening everybody
Joe: See ya!
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